raevol wrote:
My roommate is torrenting, so the website doesn't even load...

I doubt they'll make a linux port though, so little to no interest from me. My copy of Oblivion hasn't been touched in probably over a year. Of course neither has my copy of Morrowind, but hey, I still check these forums.

I just hope for fan's sake they take out the level scaling, whatever that was called. Getting whupped by a warthog because I ventured outside the noob city was incredibly frustrating.

Star-Demon wrote:
I'm relieved they decided to switch to a new engine - the old one had some nice innovations for it's time but quickly showed its age and lack of ATD, and I was insulted that they used it in New Vegas, especially when it had bugs from oblivion.

I really hope Skyrim fulfills my expectation of a very interesting, expansive, and of course cold place as described in the older games. I was hoping that work on Skyrim Improved would really come out well, but it was very early and probably still is.

I have a long list of my own requests and hopes, but most of all I just hope Quality comes first. Morrowind felt really exotic, Cyrodil felt cosmopolitan and bland. I want Skyrim to feel really rich and be really involved with my character's life there.

Bethsoft has, more or less, a negative reputation with me right now on a technical and writing side of things. It has a lot to live up to and can learn a lot from the quality of games this year both good (ME2) and bad.

raevol wrote:
I agree with like, everything you just said. I didn't even bother looking at Fallout 3 because I knew I would just be offended.

Maybe John Carmack can give them some tips lololol.

sir_herrbatka wrote:
I don't care about new TES but maybe now they will make MW freeware like Arena or DF.

raevol wrote:
Ooooh... that would be cool!

sir_herrbatka wrote:
would...

but i think that it wont happen until 2012.

Pahanilmanlintu wrote:
In Arena and Daggerfall they had an in-house renderer (XnGine) and no middleware, so they didn't have to ask any permissions. IIRC Morrowind uses at least Miles sound system and Bink in addition to Netimmerse.

sir_herrbatka wrote:
huh? But they paid for license, right?

This legal stuff is complicated. Free software is more... plain.

Chris wrote:

sir_herrbatka wrote:huh? But they paid for license, right?

It depends on the term of the license(s). Some may require a flat fee per copy, which means Bethesda would have to pay for each copy downloaded. Some may outright prohibit giving away free copies of the end product without permission. It's also possible Bethesda just wouldn't want to since it's still making them money.

Also, Arena and Daggerfall had some middleware, too. They used HMI Sound Operating System for the audio stuff. However, I wouldn't be able to even begin to guess the terms of the license, so perhaps they're allowed to "sell" it for nothing.

I don't think Morrowind uses Miles, though. I don't see any references to it anywhere, unlike other games that use it.

Lordrea wrote:
Hopes are slim. It'll be Fallout IV with swords, just like Oblivion was Fallout III with swords.

That's just stemming from my jaded view that targeting to the console demographic has ruined CRPGs, though. I'm certainly looking forward to OpenMW more than I am Bethesda's TESV.

raevol wrote:

Lordrea wrote:I'm certainly looking forward to OpenMW more than I am Bethesda's TESV.

Agreed!

sir_herrbatka wrote:

targeting to the console demographic has ruined CRPGs

Yes and no

jRPGs are only for consoles and games for PSX and SNES were sometimes stunning.

The bad thing is that development costs are now higher.

OTOH cRPG in western style is the whole diffrent world, always on PC.

IMHO western cRPG is dead since the last Might & Magic. I don't think that consoles caused this.

Anyway both traditional western and eastern cRPG are pretty mouch dead at the moment.

Star-Demon wrote:

sir_herrbatka wrote:
jRPGs are only for consoles and games for PSX and SNES were sometimes stunning.

Absolutely. My favorite games (Xenogears, Xenosaga) )are still all on console.

sir_herrbatka wrote:The bad thing is that development costs are now higher.

This. 1994 games like FF6 didn't require nearly as much in terms of content or code.

sir_herrbatka wrote:OTOH cRPG in western style is the whole diffrent world, always on PC.

Actually they tend to get both console and PC release nowadays.

sir_herrbatka wrote:IMHO western cRPG is dead since the last Might & Magic. I don't think that consoles caused this.

/Boggle @ M&M, but I think the Console H8 goes something like so:

I and Jealous of Console based Development because it's successful but necessary, but has turned my games into simple clunkers with HUGE UI features for TV.

Developing for PC is a pain. It just is. Look at what we're doing - it's difficult to make for each platform, although you COULD cut a 5% audience for God only knows how much development time to develop on windows only. Console APIs are just better. They just are. As soon as I started using XNA and C#, in two hours I got farther with over a year's worth of code I never once compiled in C++. yeah, it's not fast, but it's WAY more DONE. I like getting things done, and so do companies that have invested hundreds of thousands if not millions.

PCs are unstable, but offer the illusion of higher quality. However, no one has time to optimize anything for it. This $300 XFX HD5850 just isn't being used to its fullest, and when I try (recording BlazBlue replays) it won't get the job done.

PCs are a customizable but stationary platform. With Mobile computing and Console Based Development, the PC market really eats because it gets ports at best, and to make a game for PC is a labor of Love.

Do I have solutions? Probably not. If you want to bring back the 90's, you need games that cost less while pushing the limits...that aren't crummy to play.

One thing for sure is this: There is NO Demand for simple software. So, t ll times, Developers are facing the same problem, software just gets more complicated, and no one's around that's good enough because each person is held to a higher standard than the last. It's killing us. (It's killing me!)

sir_herrbatka wrote:
haha! You are right (probably).

PCs are just not good for games anymore, even PS3 with 256 mb of RAM can be better and cheaper. Who cares about spending money on big, power hungry, noisy PC when he may buy a console and cheaper PC good enough for almost anything besides gaming.

Maybe technology like AMD fusion will change something but I think that it's just to late.

Edit: but I really prefer 90s games for PC and SNES. Sadly games are now to big business.

Star-Demon wrote:
AMD's got nothing.

The illusion that some impassable but critical bottleneck exists between the PCI-e interface and the processor is a silly excuse to try to find a gimmick to reestablish a lost, wandering chipmaker that can no longer hold down prices on their own chips.

Oh...look at that. That's AMD for ya.

I've been hearing about this CPU-GPU deal for years. Call me back when ASUS starts making decent E-version boards for it. In the meantime, I'll be finding a way to record my sessions of me MASHIN' 'DAT D, SON in BlazBlue.

It will take some serious technological achievement and powerhouse deployment to convince me to go back to AMD.

Hircine wrote:
star-demon,

Xna is a cross platform API. what you got on Xbox is what ya got on PC.

the only reason console games run better on consoles in comparison to them running on PC's is that things like Anti Aliasing and draw distance in addition to huge chunking algorithms to reduce what is needed to draw. optimization. thats what its all about. low AA, lower draw distance, way more development time to release a hugely optimized piece of code.

the problem with developing for PC's is that you have a huge wide array of hardware components to deal with. you can't optimize for that.

get Just cause 2 for PC, then play it on Xbox360 or PS3. see the difference in graphical quality.
PC > all.

you look at your consoles then look back to my DX11 tesselation. look at your consoles and look back to my dx11 tesselations, sadly you don't have dx11 tesselation, you could have dx11 tesselation if you got rid of your consoles and get a GTX460 super overclocked like me. now back to me, my post is now diamonds. im on a rant.

obligitory post is obligitory.

Chris wrote:

sir_herrbatka wrote:PCs are just not good for games anymore, even PS3 with 256 mb of RAM can be better and cheaper.

I'd disagree. Consoles are typically cheaper, true, but "better".. I don't believe so. A console has set hardware, which is a blessing and a curse. You can program for specific hardware which lets you pull more out of it than if you program for generic hardware, but at the same time you're always going to be locked into that hardware. You can never get anything better without a new console.

On a PC, you can effectively "future proof" your game by using super-high-quality media, that needs a monster of a machine to run and that most people would have to turn the settings down. However, in a few years the base standard of computers will go up, so more people can raise the settings, which would make the same game look nicer than it did before. Consoles, though, will be stuck with what they got on release. You can see Doom3 and Crysis for this.. when the games were released, the typical PC couldn't use the highest quality settings, but over the years the machines got better, the quality settings could be raised, and that kept them looking nice.

See how well Doom3 has aged (graphically) compared to Morrowind, despite both being released around the same time. Morrowind set itself a ceiling on quality, so XBox users would see the best quality the game had to offer. This limited the PC version, which could've done so much more. Even Oblivion limited itself so the XBox360 would get the best it had to offer, despite the PC being able to do more.. it didn't take long for graphics replacer mods on the PC to surpass the texture fidelity of the original game, which more and more people can enable over time. This will likely be true of Skyrim as well (with the exception that it will be more difficult to find good enough texture artists willing to do the work necessary for free).

Plus, analog sticks are a crappy way of controlling a first-person game. A keyboard has many more keys (heck, some mice rival console controllers in terms of button count), so you don't have to go into layers and layers of menus, and you don't have to cram all the menus on screen at once, and can just bind keys to the specific menus you want. And the kicker is, even for games that work best on console-type controllers, you can pick a USB controller up for dirt cheap, plug it into the PC, and you're good to go (some console controllers can even plug directly into a PC).

Lordrea wrote:
I shouldn't have gone there. >.>

Hircine wrote:
no, sir_herrbactka shouldn't have gone there

and chris is absolutely right.

they are a good bang for buck, but never future proof and you can't get steam for them .

back to the topic (TES V)

good job they are ditching gamebryo, hopefully we can see some crytek level graphics.

and they make it for PC then port it to consoles so we can have better modding and graphics support. bring on DX11 tesselation.

i wish too they would bring out an API to directly mod the core of the game.
rather than us 'hack' it. i would like to see boats that float and sails/react to wind etc. i *want* in game, damageable objects, better than the wood boards you get in dungeons. for instance, you cast a fireball at a house made of straw, wood etc. it catches fire. the house burns to the ground and you get uber high bounty, inaccessible home (until rebuilt). oh an NO bugs. just thoughts and wishes but i doubt i will ever see it.

sir_herrbatka wrote:
Nothing will happen.

Bethesda do not like modding anymore; better sell new shiny DLC without risk of topless female characters in game.

Besides... it still have to run on xbox... right?

And Bethesda is skilled enough to screw up every piece of code so there will be massive bugs.

worst of all I think that they gonna fuck up lore just like in oblivion and in result we will get boring world.

edit:

no, sir_herrbactka shouldn't have gone there

maybe

edit2:
Besides graphic bling-bling... I don't care.

Chris wrote:

sir_herrbatka wrote:Bethesda do not like modding anymore; better sell new shiny DLC without risk of topless female characters in game.

I'm holding out hope. IIRC, Todd Howard himself has thrown praise to the modding community for the longevity of Morrowind and Oblivion. I don't think he'd be that stupid to paise modders, then immediately turn around and screw them over (famous last words..).

And Bethesda is skilled enough to screw up every piece of code so there will be massive bugs.

This will likely be an unfortunate truth. I don't really blame GameBryo for Morrowind's and Oblivion's instability. I do, however, blame it for closed, proprietary model and animation formats.

sir_herrbatka wrote:

I'm holding out hope. IIRC, Todd Howard himself has thrown praise to the modding community for the longevity of Morrowind and Oblivion. I don't think he'd be that stupid to paise modders, then immediately turn around and screw them over (famous last words..).

Words.

The facts looks just like that:
morrowind: all data files extracted on cs cd, cs avaible from the very start
oblivion: first DLC, than cs, topless bashing
Fallout 3: no comment

TES V: ???

Chris wrote:

sir_herrbatka wrote:

I'm holding out hope. IIRC, Todd Howard himself has thrown praise to the modding community for the longevity of Morrowind and Oblivion. I don't think he'd be that stupid to paise modders, then immediately turn around and screw them over (famous last words..).

Words.

Words with meaning. If he'll praise modders then screw them over, it would show everyone (not just modders) what his words are worth. If he praises modders while not really liking them, what would it mean when he praises fans? Or working partners? It'd be a PR nightmare.

The facts looks just like that:
morrowind: all data files extracted on cs cd, cs avaible from the very start
oblivion: first DLC, than cs, topless bashing
Fallout 3: no comment

Pretty sure Oblivion had the CS out within a few days (or maybe on release? just not on the DVD, which was already pretty full). Well before the first/Horse Armor DLC, in any case. FO3 did take a while, a couple months I think, but it still came out.

My main gripe, though, is the lack of after-release support. With both MW and Ob, the CS was just dropped and modders had to figure everything out themselves. It can't be that hard to give us tips, can it? Maybe take an hour a week for a month or two to have a couple people answer questions? But that seems to be Bethesda's M.O. these days.. they don't really interact with their fans.

Star-Demon wrote:

Hircine wrote:star-demon,

Xna is a cross platform API. what you got on Xbox is what ya got on PC.

Of course I know that (also - windows phone!), but you missed my point.

Sometimes what you get on PC isn't what you get on X-box. You just mentioned polish and optimization, and the same holds for PC's processing compared to X-box's, which causes problems if you're not paying attention. XNA/C# Code that runs fine on PC will run terribly on Xbox. (there are articles and examples out there for that)

Otherwise, Yeah, doing something to expectation of quality and performance does take more work and time. Time isn't something people really comprehend anymore, but what I get is you should just know all the tricks and use them by default - maybe there are higher expectations of me verbally but not in practice. Time will tell.

you look at your consoles then look back to my DX11 tesselation. look at your consoles and look back to my dx11 tesselations, sadly you don't have dx11 tesselation, you could have dx11 tesselation if you got rid of your consoles and get a GTX460 super overclocked like me. now back to me, my post is now diamonds. im on a rant.

very nice

As much as I would love to have a $500 videocard every two months to stay current and use the latest features, that DX11 tessellation is as wasted as going to Manhattan and getting a $175 hamburger topped with gold flakes. (or a caviar pizza)

Consoles just win right now - PC is a huge investment for a stationary platform with lower expectations for quality...but I have dx11 tessellation...

Do you see how impractical that is right now? I think it's a big problem to overcome.

jhooks1 wrote:
Since this will be on the 360 and PS3, I wonder if the graphics will be much better than Oblivion.

asvestomix wrote:

Hircine wrote:star-demon,

Xna is a cross platform API. what you got on Xbox is what ya got on PC.

the only reason console games run better on consoles in comparison to them running on PC's is that things like Anti Aliasing and draw distance in addition to huge chunking algorithms to reduce what is needed to draw. optimization. thats what its all about. low AA, lower draw distance, way more development time to release a hugely optimized piece of code.

the problem with developing for PC's is that you have a huge wide array of hardware components to deal with. you can't optimize for that.

get Just cause 2 for PC, then play it on Xbox360 or PS3. see the difference in graphical quality.
PC > all.

you look at your consoles then look back to my DX11 tesselation. look at your consoles and look back to my dx11 tesselations, sadly you don't have dx11 tesselation, you could have dx11 tesselation if you got rid of your consoles and get a GTX460 super overclocked like me. now back to me, my post is now diamonds. im on a rant.

obligitory post is obligitory.

you may have dx11 and tesselation and super fast gpu but the only thing you can run now with those specs are only benchmarks, i mean the game makers makes games based for consoles they dont care if pcs can run way better graphics , consoles giving the much better money, maybe it is because everyone on pc plays cracked games so why should they optimize their games for pc?

Star-Demon wrote:
Unfortunately, while there are factors that can reduce piracy, I'm beginning to think that it's just a fact of life. What you want to do is create friendly and honest systems that encourage people to buy your game for its value, or buy your game because they like what you do.

Otherwise - I don't really have any solutions to it.

As for the discussion at hand - Again, the bells and whistles of a PC are really only for enthusiasts - make your game lower spec, sell more. If I were to design a limit-pushing application, I can promise you that I won't be making any money for my trouble- and this is especially dangerous in the current economic climate and industry climate.

I would love to make games when I'm FINALLY finished with school, but I'd also love to pay off my student debt...I know I'm not alone. I'd love to push the limits, s an artist or scientist, but reality calls first...

Hircine wrote:
My Fast GPU:
Every game that has it, 16x AA.
Every game that has it, 32x AA.

Increased Detail.(further distance, more items on screen etc)

Chris wrote:

Star-Demon wrote:Unfortunately, while there are factors that can reduce piracy, I'm beginning to think that it's just a fact of life. What you want to do is create friendly and honest systems that encourage people to buy your game for its value, or buy your game because they like what you do.

That's pretty much it. Piracy happens. Many people who pirate it will not buy it regardless of its availability, and there are people who buy it anyway. If you're attempting to get the ones that are on the fence, then bogging the game down with disk checks, online activations, and crap like that, is giving a dissentive to buying it. It even turns away people who would've bought it. You're better off spending a bit more money to make a better product, to make those would-be customers want to support you.

As for the discussion at hand - Again, the bells and whistles of a PC are really only for enthusiasts - make your game lower spec, sell more. If I were to design a limit-pushing application, I can promise you that I won't be making any money for my trouble- and this is especially dangerous in the current economic climate and industry climate.

It's not like making the game for high end hardware means that only high end PCs can play it. Games have quality settings, and people need to get over this irrational complex that they must run every game on high settings. If I need to turn the settings down to make a game playable, then so be it... as long as it still looks good compared to what my hardware should be able to do, I don't care whether it's called "ultra", "high", "medium", or "low" settings. If I have to run it on lower settings, that just means I have kick-ass things to look forward to in the future when I upgrade my machine and can turn the settings up -- I'm not stuck with the same quality settings forever.

But of course, stuff like that is what you do when you want long-term gain, customer loyalty, and such. Providing a game that can still look good years into the future makes you look good to future customers. It may not help short-term gain, so of course many companies don't care to do it.

Star-Demon wrote:
I'm not sure how hard it is to program in faster or cheaper rendering and texturing. It seems to be easy enough to change resolution, which helps a lot.

Personally I'm very dissapointed with these images, the art is poor, muddy, plasticy normal maps are horrible and overblown, materials have no definition to what they actualy are and the graphics look just basic.
Certainly the art in these images is far below the quality I would expect from this highly awaited game from a very popular series.

I was anticipating amazing graphics, technology and art quality, like oblivion had at its release time.
Altough maybe it won't look so bad sitting further away from a TV, as opposed to a computer screen.

Here I am hoping these images are from a basic very early build, what do you think?

Star-Demon wrote:
Nope, that's what we're getting.

I think it looks okay, if not more of the same Brown and Bloom. At least Skyrim is snowy and pine-y. I like snow.